Guilt and Innocence

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The moment I pushed through the front door of the New Mill Town Police Station with a daisy in my hand, after five months medical and mental health leave, I heard saxophone music and narration as if I was in one of those dark detective films on some classic movie channel. I had a good imagination, and sometimes, that was bad.

I’d never been a private d**k, though mine had been kept private far too long. I was an NYPD captain in a small, mostly quiet town, and I was lonely.

Fearless Local Teens Celebrated as Heroes after Saving Mother and Toddler

The now brittle and yellow front-page newspaper article was preserved in a dusty dull gold frame that took up half the wall. It was always the first thing I saw every morning when I walked in. That morning was no different.

Hero…

It was the last thing I would think to call myself nearly thirty years later.

“We just happened to be in the right place at the right time,” I had told the reporter at the time. “My friend Dougie and I, we saw what was happening and did what we had to do.”

“How many times did you stop to fix that hi-top between camera flashes?” I asked Dougie’s image.

My teenage years, the hair trend, my taut gut from those days, and any questions concerning my sexuality long gone, I was still far from fearless.

“Wrong, wrong, wrong,” I muttered at that stupid memento on the wall. I was busy imagining myself ripping it down and stomping on it, like a flamenco dancer in construction worker boots, when the New Mill Town troop headquarters receptionist entered.

“Who you talking to, Becker?”

“Just myself. Good morning, Ruthie. It’s nice to see you.”

Ruthie was always second to arrive in the morning. Her blue canvas tote was as big as she was—or was she as small as it? The contents inside were few, despite its spaciousness. Ruthie removed the brown paper lunch sack first and immediately stuck it in the mini fridge against the back wall in the room where it, her desk, and several large filing cabinets sat. There was usually a thermos in Ruthie’s bag, cocoa in winter, iced tea for at least another three weeks, since it was now mid-August. Ruthie always wrapped herself in a hand-crocheted shawl to protect her shoulders from the chill from the AC vent or the opening and closing front door, also dependent upon the season. Once she pulled that out and did so, she reached in one last time for her gossip rag of choice, Weekly World News. Ruthie wasn’t interested in devouring stories and odd happenings concerning celebrities and the weird things they did. She would rather read about real people, their odd happenings and the weird things they did. It was nice to see nothing had changed in my absence.

“What strangeness have they got going on this week?” I asked her.

“Some hundred-year-old eccentric billionaire up in Oregon finally died. He has nine ex-wives and nineteen kids, and his last will and testament left everything he owned to his cat.”

“Damn.” I picked up the rag. “I hope that rich cat’s on life one outta nine, because the next person in line’s gonna be out to get him. Hey.” I noticed the date. “This magazine is three weeks old. This is yesterday’s news.”

“Not to me. Why pay good money at a*****e for bullshit hot off the press when I can get it free from the library a little later on?” Ruthie leaned in. “Ducky Wallingford is still dead, isn’t he?”

“How do we know? The latest Weekly World News might claim he’s been resurrected.”

Ruthie snatched back her paper. “I’ll let you know at the end of the month. Won’t really affect our lives either way, though, will it?”

“I guess not. Have a nice day, Ruthie.” I handed her the daisy. It was part of our morning ritual, one my father had started many years ago, back before I was a teenager, back before I was a hero, one who decided falling in love could be a bad thing.

“Thank you, Captain.” Ruthie went to the water cooler to fill her makeshift vase, a chipped mug that read, You Have the Right to Remain Silent Until I Finish This Coffee. “You have a nice day, too,” she said, turning back to me with a smile. “And it’s nice to have you back.”

“Nice to be back, and I’ll try.”

The squad room I’d missed hit me with the aroma of strong coffee and resentment. At the start of my hiatus, my partner had been left in charge. Just two weeks before my return, he’d retired. To my chagrin, I’d missed the sheet cake. To the irritation of the others who’d stayed behind, the commissioner had brought up a newbie from Westchester, rather than promote from within. Now, as the place came to life with the arrival of the other three cops who greeted me and then settled in, I could read their anticipation as we all awaited the moment that newbie and I would finally meet.

The intermittent clack of computer keys and muffled conversation ceased when the entrance out front squeaked open at precisely nine-o-seven.

“Good morning,” I heard, first a male voice, then Ruthie saying it back.

“Good morning.”

The Westchester transplant entered at least eight minutes later than he should have, with a steaming Styrofoam cup and all the swagger of a jungle lion who had just eaten half a zebra.

I suddenly had a hankering for a black and white cookie.

The tardy outsider’s name was Preston Ames.

“Hi, I’m Ames Preston.”

Okay, so it wasn’t.

“Nice to meet you.” He squinted at the little gold rectangle on my gray suit jacket. “Justin.”

I topped off my Just the Facts, Ma’am coffee mug, a gift from my father, before he’d decided I didn’t live up to his expectations. “The name’s Justice…Captain Justice Becker.” Mr. Young, Blond, and Hot might have had a flaw after all, less than twenty-twenty vision. But, damn, did he smell good.

“Oh, yeah. When people talk about you, and everyone does, they just call you Becker. I guess I forgot the first name, hard as it is to forget.”

I shook his hand when offered.

“I suppose with a name like Justice, you were either going to be a cop, a lawyer, or a superhero, huh?”

He had sweaty palms. Then again, at eighty-five degrees with ninety percent humidity, there wasn’t a spot on my body not sweating.

“Flunk out of law school? Rip your tights?”

Three eavesdroppers “Oohed” and snickered.

“Lawyers get criminals off,” I told the guy with two last names and no first. “Cops put them away.” I met Ames Preston eye to eye, my brown to big, baby blues that reminded me of Chinese Checkers marbles I’d played with as a kid. “And you know what? We are superheroes to a lot of people.”

“You got a point there,” Preston said.

“While we’re at it, don’t forget, I got seniority on you.” I pulled him close, his hand still in mine as a power move, not affection or attraction, though I did take a second to imagine the guy in clingy red tights that would show every muscle, curve and bulge. “I’m not your underling, you’re mine. You’ll call me Captain Becker, and now that I’m back, I’m back in charge.”

“Yes, sir.” Preston’s black dress shirt pulled tight across his broad chest when he saluted with the hand I’d finally released. The kid, who’d made Captain awfully young, was a smartass and had a stomach a guy could lay out a jigsaw puzzle on.

Chinese checkers? A jigsaw puzzle? I thought. What am I, a hundred? I sucked in my gut.

“So, uh, let me see if I have this straight, Captain Becker.” Preston’s smirk indicated he still wasn’t getting it. “You want me under you. Becker’s the top, Preston’s the bottom.” He winked. “Just this once, I’ll consider it.”

HR would have been on both our asses, had they been around to hear the exchange or read my thoughts.

“You’ll take whatever position I give you and like it.” I could almost see myself in the asshole’s pearly whites. I was going to have to take Ames Preston down a peg or two, and also find out what toothpaste he used.

A sudden voice booming from the outer office distracted us and our audience. “Someone’s gotta help me!”

I tensed. It was a voice I knew well, Archie Wilkes’.

“Show Archie back, Ruthie,” I hollered.

“On our way.” She shouted right back.

The intercom was rarely used at the New Mill Town PD.

Ruthie had started complaining about the annex to the building the moment the blueprints had been approved. “Suddenly, I’m tossed into solitary confinement out here, away from all the action. It’s going to suck.”

I opened the door between us and held it for her and the freaked-out kid. Archie Wilkes always moved like a newborn giraffe trying to take its first step, all spindly arms and awkward legs. He had gold and silver hair, not silvered by age, but since birth. At the moment, he looked more like a perp than a victim. His jeans were torn, his platinum eyes and demeanor were shifty, and the white undershirt he wore as an outer one was caked with mud that made him more Holstein than the metaphoric animal I’d first had in mind.

“Let me tell you someone’s here before you tell me to bring them back,” Ruthie said now, offering a scowl. “We could have visited a while. It gets lonely out there.”

Though major criminal incidents might be few and far between in New Mill Town—years in between—those years seemed to fly by, leaving me to wonder if I would ever heal from the ones that had touched me personally.

“Sure thing, Ruthie.”

“Try to calm down, Archie.” She stretched to reach his shoulder for a reassuring touch, then even farther, presumably to move the veil of distinctly blond wisps from in front of his eyes. Ruthie couldn’t quite get all the way up there, though. I could have but didn’t, despite the fact I liked to meet everyone’s gaze square on. “Can I get you anything?” Ruthie asked. Maybe she’d been going for the smudges of dirt on Archie’s forehead. The boy was a mess, head to filthy shoe. “A cold drink, maybe?”

Archie shook his head side to side and presented his water bottle.

“Okay. Just let me know if you want something else.”

The moment Ruthie was gone, Ames Preston took over. “Have a seat.” He pulled out a rolling chair from behind someone’s desk and offered it to the visitor. That pissed me off, because the chair was mine. “Take a few deep breaths. In…out. In…out.”

The pair of them sounded like an obscene phone call, something as obsolete as jigsaw puzzles and Chinese checkers, I thought after making the comparison in my head. People posted revenge porn and sent unrequested d**k pics these days, while playing video games—gaming. The last obscene phone call was probably made around the time the replacement cover boy cop was born, I figured. And no one said, “Playing video games.” I was going to have to stop living in the past someday.

“What’s going on, Archie?” Preston asked him.

“You’ve met?” It was odd seeing this stranger speaking to people I knew, like he knew them, too.

“Sure. I know Archie, Captain Becker. Archie, like on Riverdale.”

I likely would have said Bunker, after the character on my father’s favorite TV show from the seventies. Damn. Suddenly, I felt forty-five going on ancient and irrelevant.

“Are you the victim of a crime, Archie?” Preston inquired.

“Yes. No. Maybe.”

I tried to calm him with a smile. “Can we narrow it down to two?”

“I’m not sure.” He held my gaze. “You’re back.”

“I am. Now, tell me what happened.”

Archie chewed on his lip, and his fingers moved, as if he was playing an imaginary piano. “I think someone tried to push me in front of Ralph Roe’s garbage truck.”

Suddenly, I needed that chair. “Jesus, Archie.” The corner of my desk would have to do. With a fistful of tissues from the box beside me, I reached past Preston to wipe wet streaks and a large splotch from young Archie’s face. “You think someone pushed you? How can you not be sure about something like that?” After one dab I handed them over. “Clean yourself up.”

It was one hell of a first day back, already.

“Well, it could have been an accident, I suppose.” Archie’s first swipe turned the dark, gritty circle into several lighter swooshes that kind of looked like extra eyebrows. His hands were grimy, too, and so was the tissue, almost immediately. “It probably was an accident.” He stood.

So did I.

“I should go.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Preston, who’d never sat, put a hand to Archie’s chest. “Hold up there, Arch. If you were worried enough to come in here and seek out the police, I think you should probably tell us some more and let us figure it all out.”

“Oh.” Archie looked to me. He knew who was boss.

I nodded. “Go ahead.”

“I don’t want to say something bad happened…if nothing did. That’s wrong.”

“It is, Archie.” Preston motioned for Archie to sit back down. “So, let’s figure out if something bad happened.”

“Okay. Well, Ralph didn’t hit me, for one thing. He blew the horn and waved.”

“Gee whiz. That was friendly.”

I wasn’t feeling friendly. I wanted to throw sarcastic Ames Preston out the window.

“Yeah. I know Ralph well,” Archie said.

“Small town.” Preston smiled. He was playing both good cop and bad cop. “I hope to know everyone here soon, myself, including Captain Becker, here.”

“Did you see who shoved you, Archie?”

“No, Justice. I mean, no, sir. I didn’t get a good look. See, actually, the only reason I think I was pushed is because Ralph stopped the truck and hollered, ‘That guy shoved you right in front of me!’”

“Really?” Archie had gotten quite loud in his retelling. My ears were ringing.

“Yeah.”

“‘That guy?’ That’s what Ralph said? Just like that?”

“Yes,” Archie told me. “Out the window. ‘That guy shoved you right in front of me!’” He shouted it again and added the wave.

“No name?” Preston just couldn’t keep quiet.

“No, sir.”

There was little difference, if any, in their ages. Still, Archie was respectful. I liked that about him. “So, maybe, it was someone he didn’t know?” I grabbed a pad to start writing stuff down. Preston, following suit, picked up his fancy, schmancy, modern iPad.

“Oh. Maybe,” Archie responded. “Ralph definitely didn’t say a name. Ralph knows everybody, though.”

“That he does.”

“He told me I should come here and talk to you.”

“To me?”

“What are you thinking, chief?”

“I’m a Captain, Preston, not the chief.”

“Sorry, bud.”

“And I’m not your bud!”

“Maybe someday.”

“Maybe not.”

Archie’s head pivoted, as if he was watching a tennis match. His mouth hung open, at least until he brought his lips together to lick them, likely getting a good taste of New Mill Town earth.

“I can hope,” Preston said.

“Don’t hold your breath.”

“In and out. In and out, Captain Becker.”

“Let’s get back on task, newbie. It’s also too early for thinking.”

“Sorry, boss.” Preston and that constant arrogant smirk of his didn’t look the least bit contrite. He licked his lips, too, a shiny, puffy, baby pink pair on a chiseled, soap opera leading man, clean-shaven face. It was annoying, that face, one that likely couldn’t grow more than peach fuzz and three short yellow hairs in a month. “You said guy, Arch. Are you sure it was a man? Was Ralph?”

“Yes.” Archie nodded emphatically. “Ralph was a man.”

I squelched a smile.

“No…I mean…” Preston adjusted his tie clasp, a silvery bar with a small red flower and his initials, APP. I was a detail person. I noticed things, like how the newbie’s initials spelled app. Despite my age, that was a word I knew and something I’d actually used. I also knew what an ass was, and imagined the tie clip saying that, instead, for accuracy sake. “The guy who shoved you, was he a man?”

“Oh. Sorry. I thought Ralph being a man would be kind of obvious, but you asked, so…”

I was also a thinker. Right then, I thought about how Archie always wanted to do his best. He was naïve, and often literal. “There’s no need to be sorry, Archie.”

“Good. As for the other person, I think I already said I wasn’t sure.” Archie sought assurance from me, so I offered a subtle tilt of the head. “Yes. Yes, I did say that.”

There was something growing on his chin, something new, since I had last seen him way back in February. Scruff I termed it. Six months’ worth or just a week old, it was hard to tell. Sandy in color, the clump of brambly whiskers was just like Shaggy’s from Scooby Doo.

“If I’m not sure I was shoved, and I don’t know who it was who maybe shoved me, I probably wouldn’t know the s*x. Ralph definitely said ‘guy,’ that much I know.”

“That’s good, Archie.” Preston nodded, too. Monkey see, monkey do. “Maybe you should be a cop. You ever think about that, Archie?”

“Maybe. And you don’t have to talk down to me.”

“Oh.” Preston seemed shaken now, but just for a moment. “I, uh, didn’t mean to. My apologies. Do you recall if anyone was near you right before you were possibly shoved?”

“Hmm.” It was easy to tell when Archie was thinking. Lines formed across his forehead, despite his youth, and he’d squint his piercing, telling eyes, as if smizing for Tyra Banks or looking for the answers in the far-off distance. Not a deep blue, like Preston’s, they were closer to gray. “A man passed me. He walked past me, but then…”

“Then, what?” I crouched down, so Archie would focus on me.

“I think whoever it was turned around, so that by the time I got to the intersection, he was behind me.”

“He?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure, now?”

“Yes.”

“A hundred percent?” Preston asked.

Fuck him for butting in again.

“I’m not good at percent.” Archie frowned. “But I’m not dumb.”

“No,” I said, sitting back down on my desk. “You’re not.”

“This guy…” Preston took over again. “If he was a guy…do you know what he was wearing?”

“Orange!” Archie exclaimed. “Like a hunter.”

“Good, Archie. Traffic cone orange, like that?”

“Yes. August isn’t hunting season, though.”

“It isn’t,” I said. “Was it a T-shirt?”

“Like maybe he worked on a road crew…something like that?”

Fuck Preston and his mouth. Archie was suggestable. We weren’t going to get anywhere by second guessing him, like before, or offering him answers.

“Maybe, Captain Preston. I think it was a hoodie, though.”

“Because of the rain early this morning, maybe?”

“Sure. It’s hot again, now, so they wouldn’t need it not to be cold. The hood was up, and it was big. I couldn’t really see a face or a body. I just saw the hood and the zipper. It was definitely on the man’s side.”

“So, not zipped up?” I asked.

“Right. The jacket flapped, when the person moved, and the zipper pull was on the side for men.”

“Very good, Archie.”

He smiled at me.

“How did he move?” Preston posed. “This man in the orange hoodie, did he move like he was young, like you, a little older, like me, or even older, like Captain Becker, here?”

I glared.

“I’m not sure,” Archie said. “I don’t know. They moved pretty fast. It’s hard to tell someone’s age by their body, though. Some old people are strong. My Aunt can move a piano by herself, and Ruthie beat me at arm wrestling when I was sixteen and she was almost sixty.”

“I’ll remember that if either one ever challenges me to a fight.” Preston gave Archie a nudge. “How about the size of the body, then? Was he tall and skinny, like you, tall and muscular, like me…?”

I rolled my eyes. Ames Preston was full of himself, just as expected. Sometimes rushing to judgement didn’t make a guy wrong.

“Or was he maybe kind of fat, like—”

“Don’t say it,” I warned.

Preston laughed. “You’re funny, and in no way fat. I hope to look as good as you in ten years.”

The difference in age was likely more than that. The guy was trying flattery now. I added a sneer to my glare.

“I was gonna say Santa. Was he fat, like Santa, Archie? Big, like the hoodie?”

“Um. I really don’t know.” Poor Archie started pulling on his fingers. “I don’t think anyone would push me on purpose. Most of the people who live here are nice, right, Justice?”

“That’s what I hear.” Preston took the question that wasn’t his to answer.

“How’d you get so muddy, Archie?”

“I fell in the mud. There’s a lot of mud from all the rain.”

Preston wrote that down, so I did, too, though I didn’t know why. “Did you fall in the mud when shoved?”

“No. I fell earlier, outside behind the restaurant.”

“You’re okay, though?”

“Sure.” Archie reached toward my arm, but then pulled back. “I’m a mess, but I’m good. Are you?”

“I’m fine, Archie. Thank you.”

“For real, this time?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“Tell us the rest about how you fell at the restaurant, Archie.”

Archie worked at Dawn’s Diner during the summer, Dawn Leary’s place, washing dishes and bussing tables. The rest of the year, he was a library aide at New Mill Town Elementary and went to college.

“Dawn’s is where Arch and I met.” Preston picked up his takeout cup and took a sip. “I had breakfast there my first few days here.”

“It was after the breakfast rush today. That’s when I fell. I went out to the dumpster. You know there’s a little hill in back.” Archie turned to Preston, “There’s a little hill,” then back to me. “I slipped coming down, because it was wet.”

Preston put his fingertips to Archie’s chest, taking his focus. “It’s wet here.”

“Damp.”

“Yes.”

I swallowed hard. “You fell face first?”

“Yes. No. First, I fell on my ass.” Archie covered his mouth. “Sorry.”

“We don’t arrest people for cursing anymore.” Preston finally moved his finger, only to pat the same spot with his whole hand.

“My aunt tells me not to curse, but sometimes I forget.”

“I forget, too.”

“So does Justice.” Archie had a nice smile. “It’s hard to always be good. Anyway, when I fell again, it was on my face. It must look awful.”

“Nah.” Preston leaned down to tend to it with one of the tissues. “Not so bad, really.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, I went in to tell Dawn I fell. She yelled. She yells a lot. She told me I look like a pig who’s been rolling in the muck, and to hurry up and go home and change my clothes. So, when I came out of the diner, I only walked a little bit on the sidewalk, but then, I thought going diagonally across the street would be quicker.”

“To get home?” Preston asked.

“Yeah.”

“Do you usually go home after breakfast?”

I knew the answer to that. Archie’s daily routine, like everyone else’s in town, was the same day to day. I assumed it hadn’t changed in the months I’d been away.

“No. I was supposed to go to the bank, like I always do. I go to the bank and take a late breakfast to Aunt Faye sometimes. Dawn ended up going to the bank, and I ended up forgetting Aunt Faye’s food, because of everything that happened. Sometimes, she doesn’t eat it, anyway. Sometimes, I know she won’t like what’s leftover, so I don’t bother. Dawn was mad about having to leave Adam alone there while she went. Adam is one of Dawn’s grandsons,” Archie told Preston. “Plus, Dawn doesn’t like to go to the bank when it’s hot. She always sends me. I couldn’t walk in a mess, though. I had a bottle of water, so I poured some in my hand and used it to wash my face. I thought if I did a good enough job, I could go to the bank, first, because it’s right there. I didn’t do a good job, though. Dawn said so, then I saw it in the glass door that’s kind of like a mirror here at the police station before I came in.”

Maybe the front door was what had attracted Preston to the New Mill Town PD. He came across as the kind of guy who liked to look at himself.

“Is it possible, once you’d started off again, that you couldn’t see the truck, you know, because you had water in your eyes,” he suggested.

“Maybe.”

Archie started chewing the inside of his cheek. I knew this whole thing had to be hard on the boy and hated seeing him upset. We’d both lived in New Mill Town our entire lives. My life having begun a generation before, I remembered the day Archie was born. The horrific scene, the sirens, the cops, the ambulance, the bodies, and the whole town going into mourning afterward, none of it was buried quite deeply enough in my mind to stay down for any length of time.

“So, the accident…” I gritted my teeth. “When it almost happened, you were definitely headed home?”

“Yes.”

“Where is home?” Preston asked.

“Two-eleven Baker Street.” The first time Archie pointed, it was in the wrong direction. I wasn’t good at that sort of thing myself. “I live in the attic.”

“Small house?”

“No.”

“Just want your own space?”

“I guess.”

“A man needs his space.”

“Enough, Preston!”

Archie jumped.

“Sorry, Archie.” I would always be protective of the boy. The entire town would. There was not one single citizen of New Mill Town who would ever consider calling him a bad name, let alone pushing him into traffic. The very thought of someone I knew doing so made me sick to my stomach. On the other hand, of the other two most likely scenarios, though both were preferable, only one was problem free.

“It’s okay.” Obviously, it wasn’t. Archie wouldn’t even look at me, now. “I’d like to go home.” He stood, all fidgety. “I really don’t think anyone pushed me. I’m okay, so…”

“That’s good. I’m glad you’re okay,” Preston said. “We can arrange your release soon.”

“Release?”

“You can go any time you want, Archie,” I said. “But…maybe just hang another moment or two, okay? That’s not going to hurt anything.”

“Right.” Preston motioned toward the chair. “You came in, you made a statement…We really can’t just ignore it, now, can we? What if…What if someone else is pushed in front of a truck today, because we didn’t take this seriously?”

Archie gasped and looked to me again.

“We should go over everything, Archie. Captain Preston and I want to make sure we know as much as you remember.”

“I’m maybe more subjective, Arch. Being an outsider and all, I might see something Captain Becker takes for granted.”

I hated to agree with the arrogant, big city tool. “I didn’t say any of that.” I wouldn’t, even it could be true. “Just a few more questions, Archie, and then you can go. Okay?”

“Okay.” Archie sat.

“Okay.” I smiled and almost meant it.

“If I may, Captain Becker, I think it might be important to know if Archie can think of anyone who might wish to push him in front of a garbage truck. Do you have any enemies, Archie? Has someone in town been angry with you about something, lately?”

“Maybe.”

“Could you reveal who that person might be for us?”

I was interested in the identity of that someone as well.

“Oh.” Archie wrung his muddy hands. The rubber on his sneakers squeaked on the waxed, orange speckled tile, and the little blue and white threads from his torn denim danced when his leg began to bounce. “I don’t think I should,” he said, watching the foot, avoiding eye contact.

“Why is that?” Preston asked.

“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”

“Hmm. That’s admirable, but I’d hate to see you get hurt, just because you’re too nice to finger someone, someone out to hurt you. You see what I’m saying?”

“He sees just fine, Preston. Who’s mad at you, Archie? You can tell me.”

Archie met my gaze. He inhaled deeply, and the foot finally settled. “You are, Justice.”